Redesigns: ESPN.com vs. Cyclingnews
Posted on 07. Jan, 2009 in Bike industry, Marketing, New Media
Within the last two days, the world’s #1 sports site and #1 cycling site both launched redesigns. ESPN.com’s was a complete rebuild with entirely new strategies for user experience and advertising options. Cyclingnews, on the other hand, accommodated a new ad display strategy with fairly small code tweak that significantly alters the user experience. A full rebuild of Cyclingnews is due to launch later this year.
The change to Cyclingnews was driven by a shift from more small ads to fewer big ads. In the old look, there were 12 ad positions above the fold and only one was compliant with IAB standard sizes. Now there are 5 positions, all of which conform to IAB standards. In theory, that’s an improvement for everyone: users feel less bombarded, advertisers get more bang for the buck and can run the same ad sizes on Cyclingnews and VeloNews, Future (Cyclingnews’ owner) can charge higher rates and traffic ads across multiple sites. Problem is, the ads are overwhelming.
In my 1100×760 browser window, Cyclingnews’ ratio of content to ads is just 2:1 – that’s compared to 6:1 on the new ESPN without including the menus or scores ticker above the main content area. It’s worth noting that ESPN’s ratio would be 3:1 if they included the same size leaderboard as Cyclingnews. Even that would still be a significant difference, especially since the actual content on Cyclingnews is so text-heavy that you barely notice anything other than the ads.
ESPN.com has also gone to a cleaner look with simplified navigation, heavy reliance on photos to communicate the most important content, and minimal advertising (although we can expect to see more of that). One the one hand, it looks really nice. On the other hand, there’s arguably less information on the home page than there used to be and fewer headlines to click on. Former ESPN web designer Mike Davidson has written an excellent review in which he describes the new look as “more of a ‘glance and go’ site” – I’d agree with that, although I’d also agree with Mike that it’s a pretty good overall improvement.
Getting back to Cyclingnews, here are three easily implementable suggestions to mitigate the new ad strategy’s impact on user experience:
Fixed-width centered layout: Without the left-side navigation and ad column, the content is squeezed against the edge of the window and the fluid-width layout makes the ads even more dominant as the browser narrows. Every other significant ad-driven website uses a fixed-width centered layout for good reason.
Search on the homepage: Cyclingnews’ search functionality has always been… difficult. But having to click through to another page in order to use it is not an improvement. There’s plenty of room in the navigation bar for a search box.
Useful navigation: Cyclingnews deserves a more powerful menu than this blog. How about some rollover menu options? It’s no longer clear how to access some parts of the site, like Rider Diaries.
The current situation is an awkward halfway point, but Future has done a good job from a visual and technological standpoint on BikeRadar and we can expect the same from the “real” Cyclingnews relaunch. Regardless, ESPN was wise to launch its redesign in one fell swoop.
(here’s an old post reviewing Future’s first round of changes to Cyclingnews)
Excellent analysis, as always.
I look forward to the day when publishers like Future and Competitor (VN) have even a third of the budget ESPN can muster for a redesign. We’ll see that day coming when the ads on cyclingnews migrate from small third-party parts makers to national consumer brands.
Considering that cyclingnews isn’t even able to sell their own leaderboard, that day may be a long time coming.
1. The move to IAB standard ad sizes means that advertisers can use the same creative on CN that they use on any other site on the web.
2. CN’s parent company is an international publisher that has relationships with major brands and agencies, and can traffic ads across dozens of websites.
It’s not a stretch to think that non-endemic ads will be running on Cyclingnews sooner rather than later.
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